Wisdom at Work Fellowship

A two-year executive education fellowship that develops school leaders to foster flourishing communities and lasting change through the Practical Wisdom Framework.

What is the Wisdom at Work Fellowship?

School leaders face myriad challenges: handling angry parent emails, managing contentious meetings, and addressing bullying, before the school day even begins. Each situation requires nuanced thinking and judgment, not one-size-fits-all answers. How do we help school leaders to move from reactive mode to practical wise and formative responses?

Our project equips school leaders with the practices and dispositions to claim and leverage this formative space. We view Practical Wisdom (PW) as the antidote to reactive decision-making: the disposition to press pause; deliberate and respond well. PW enables leaders to attend to context, engage stakeholders meaningfully, and adjudicate competing priorities—turning challenges into opportunities to promote flourishing.

While practical wisdom remains largely the purview of philosophy and psychology, its application in school leadership is under examined. What does practical wisdom look like in this context? And how can it be developed?

We leverage a Research Practice Partnership to optimize the Wisdom at Work Fellowship (WAWF) building on early success and drawing insights from 46 school leaders in our inaugural program. Our Research Practice Partnership (RPP) engages practitioners as equal partners in research and program design.

Over the course of three years this RPP will form up to 75 School Leaders, giving rise to a dynamic model of professional development, (the Wisdom at Work Fellowship) and a robust network of Fellows, who revitalize school leaders and shape a sustainable model.

This project aims to shape leaders in practical wisdom and culminates an empirically-based model, evidence-based tools, and an international network committed to educating for flourishing. Ultimately, we seek to revitalize school leadership, build the unity, trust, and relationships vital to the flourishing of school communities. In the process, we will generate pioneering research and inspire cross-sector replication.

This project was made possible through the support of Grant 63617 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the grantee and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

The Practical Wisdom Project is housed at the Abigail Adams Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. For those seeking related consulting or leadership coaching, services are also available through the separately operated Practical Wisdom Group, LLC.